Azimutt on Google Cloud Run

Azimutt is an open-source, next-generation database-schema explorer and ERD (entity relationship diagram) tool for real-world databases, built with Elixir/Phoenix. It lets teams explore, document, and design large schemas (thousands of tables), search across columns and relations, and share diagrams. This module deploys Azimutt on Cloud Run v2 on top of the App_CloudRun foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud infrastructure.

This guide focuses on the cloud services Azimutt uses and how to explore and operate them from the Google Cloud Console and the command line. For the mechanics common to every Cloud Run application — service identity, ingress and load balancing, scaling and concurrency, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC Service Controls, backups, and the deployment lifecycle — refer to the App_CloudRun foundation guide rather than repeating them here.

What Azimutt costs on RAD, and how that compares

Azimutt on RAD's Cloud Run module costs about US$89 a month in a project you own, with no licence fee for the software itself. RAD charges a one-off module fee of 110 credits (US$11 at the top-up price) in a project you own, and 99 credits (10% lower) in a project RAD manages. If Azimutt needs to run continuously across pods or beside other Kubernetes workloads, see the GKE guide instead. Figures are as at 8 October 2026; sources are listed at the end of this section.

If you only need it occasionally — studying for a certification, a demo, a seasonal need — a RAD-managed project can be deleted and restored within 30 days for a handful of credits, so that about US$89 a month becomes close to nothing instead. See Pause it for free, below.

What you pay on RAD

You pay for three things:

	In a Google Cloud project you own	In a project RAD manages for you
Module fee, once per deployment	110 credits (US$11 at the top-up price)	99 credits (10% lower)
Build time	A few credits, metered per minute of build time	The same
Google Cloud running cost	Billed by Google to your own billing account, about US$89 a month for the default configuration (table below)	Metered hourly in credits; RAD publishes 26 credits a day, about 780 a month (about US$78 at the top-up price, US$62 at the Scale plan's rate)
Who owns what	You own the project and its billing; RAD deploys and updates it	RAD owns the project, with guardrails, quotas and budget alerts; you get console access, and a minimum purchased balance is held in reserve

10 credits cost US$1 on a one-off top-up, and less on a monthly plan. In a project RAD manages, the database is shared by every application in the project, so a second application does not add a second one.

Default running cost in your own project (us-central1, Google list prices):

Resource (module default)	Per month
Cloud Run, 2x vCPU / 4 GiB (scaleToZero)	US$31.53
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	US$51.02
Cloud NAT and networking	US$5
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	US$1
Total	about US$89

How it compares

No name-brand SaaS competitor is a clean match for Azimutt, so the honest comparison is a plain self-managed server. Running the same open-source software yourself, a Hetzner CPX22 (2 vCPU/4 GB, about $24/month) or a DigitalOcean 2 vCPU/4 GB Droplet (also $24/month) is roughly the same shape; a GCP Compute Engine e2-standard-2 (2 vCPU/8 GB) runs about $49/month.
RAD is not cheaper than a bare VPS in cash terms, and does not try to be. What RAD adds for a similar price is a managed database, Secret Manager for credentials, and monitoring that would otherwise be your own job to set up, patch and keep backed up.
The admin's own time is the real cost a VPS does not show. Security patches, backups and version upgrades on a bare server are work someone has to keep doing; RAD's managed services absorb that.

Pause it for free: delete a RAD-managed project, restore it when you need it

If Azimutt runs in a project RAD manages for you, you have an option that goes well beyond scaling to zero: delete the whole project, and restore it within 30 days for close to nothing. This suits occasional use — studying for a certification, a demo, a seasonal need — far better than running Azimutt continuously.

How it works. Deleting a RAD-managed project unlinks its billing first, then asks Google to delete the project outright. Google does not remove it immediately: it keeps the project, recoverable, for 30 days, and because billing is already unlinked nothing is charged while it waits. Unlike deleting one module, this does not tear down the database, any VM or the compute resource one by one — the whole project simply stops, and nothing is billed in the meantime.
Restoring costs a handful of credits, not a rebuild. Within 30 days, only the project's owner can restore it. RAD asks Google to undelete the project and reattaches its billing account, then asks you to run Update on each deployment to confirm everything came back. Because nothing was individually destroyed, that Update finds the same resources already there — it is a check, not a rebuild, and an Update never charges the module fee again. This costs only a handful of credits in total (under US$1), against paying the module fee and a full build again.
What this needs. You must own the project (not one RAD only manages billing for), you must restore it yourself within the 30 days — after that Google deletes it for good — and restoring is admitted like creating a new project, so your purchased credit balance must still clear the tier's floor (100 credits for the sandbox tier most study and demo use fits). Google says most services are fully working again within 36 hours of a restore.
One real gap: backups do not survive. Anything Azimutt writes to a backup bucket inside the project is very likely gone as soon as you delete the project, even though the project itself is recoverable for 30 days — that bucket has Cloud Storage's soft-delete explicitly turned off. Anyone who has customised the deployment and wants to keep that work should copy a backup out (to Google Drive, or a bucket outside the project) before deleting. For a default install with nothing irreplaceable in it, this does not matter.

Pay only while you use it, the other way: delete and redeploy

This is the fallback for a project you own, or once the 30-day restore window above has passed: delete the deployment, and deploy it again when you next need it.

What a redeploy costs. The module fee again, plus the builds: roughly 115 credits (about US$11.50) in your own project, or 104 credits in a RAD-managed one, because RAD rebuilds the resources from scratch. Deleting saves money once Azimutt would otherwise sit unused long enough to clear that redeploy cost against its own running cost — roughly 4 days or more in your own project (US$2.95/day) or 4 days or more in a RAD-managed one (26 credits/day).
Most of the running cost is usually shared infrastructure. The database stops only when nothing else in the project uses them, so deleting Azimutt while another application shares the project saves only Azimutt's own compute part.
Keep your data first. Anything Azimutt writes to a backup bucket inside the deployment is deleted with it — copy the latest backup out (to Google Drive, or a bucket you keep) before deleting if you want to keep it.
RAD does not recreate a deleted deployment for you. You enter the settings again when you redeploy.

Lab sessions and Managed Environments

Lab sessions, for training. A trainer runs a session for a class. Each participant gets Azimutt in their own Google Cloud project for 15 minutes to 24 hours, within an allowance the trainer sets. Either the trainer funds every place, or each participant pays for their own. Everything is deleted when the session ends and unused credits go back to the trainer.
Managed Environments, for consultancies. A partner runs Azimutt for a client from a ring-fenced wallet it funds, and settles with the client directly. If the wallet runs low, billing pauses and the data is kept, so nobody receives an unexpected charge. At the end the partner hands the project over and the deployments become the client's own.

Credits can be bought in more than 20 currencies, including XAF, XOF, NGN, GHS, KES and ZAR, by card, bank transfer or mobile money.

Sources (8 October 2026): Google Cloud list prices from the Cloud Billing Catalog API; RAD's fees and daily-credit estimate from radmodules.dev/pricing; Delete and restore projects for the pause/restore mechanics. Prices change; check each source before relying on a figure.

1. Overview

Azimutt runs as a single Elixir/Phoenix container on Cloud Run v2, listening on port 4000. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	Cloud Run v2	Phoenix container, 2 vCPU / 4 GiB by default, serverless autoscaling; scale-to-zero enabled
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — Azimutt does not support MySQL or other engines
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A bucket is provisioned; uploads default to local ephemeral disk (`FILE_STORAGE_ADAPTER = local`)
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated Phoenix `SECRET_KEY_BASE`; database password
Image build	Cloud Build + Artifact Registry	Thin wrapper FROM `ghcr.io/azimuttapp/azimutt`, mirrored into Artifact Registry
Ingress	Cloud Run URL / Cloud Load Balancing	Default `run.app` URL; optional external HTTPS load balancer + custom domain

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

PostgreSQL 15 is mandatory. The database engine is fixed by the shared application layer; selecting any other engine breaks startup. All Azimutt project data (schemas, diagrams, layouts, users) lives in Postgres.
Azimutt connects to Postgres over private-IP TCP with SSL, not the socket. Ecto/postgrex cannot parse the Cloud SQL Unix-socket DSN, so the cloud entrypoint builds DATABASE_URL against DB_IP and sets DATABASE_ENABLE_SSL=true. The Cloud SQL socket is still mounted (enable_cloudsql_volume = true) purely so the db-init job can create the role/database without SSL.
SECRET_KEY_BASE is generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager. Rotating it after first boot signs out every active session; only rotate in a maintenance window.
Scale-to-zero is enabled by default (min_instance_count = 0, cpu_always_allocated = false). Azimutt is a request/response app and a cold start reconnects to Postgres cleanly. Cold starts add a few seconds of latency after idle; set min_instance_count = 1 to avoid them.
Migrations run automatically on every boot. The container command is /app/bin/migrate && /app/bin/server, so a version upgrade applies its schema changes on start — allow extra time on the first boot.
application_version = "latest" maps to Azimutt's main tag. Azimutt publishes no :latest tag; pin to a specific release in production.
Sign-up is open by default. Azimutt lets anyone with the URL create an account. Restrict access after creating your first account (custom domain + IAP, or Azimutt's own auth settings via environment_variables).

2. Google Cloud Services & How to Explore Them

All commands assume PROJECT and REGION are set. Service and resource names are reported in the deployment Outputs.

A. Cloud Run — the Azimutt service

Azimutt runs as a Cloud Run v2 service that autoscales by request load between the minimum and maximum instance counts. Each deployment creates an immutable revision; traffic can be split across revisions for safe rollouts.

Console: Cloud Run → select the service for revisions, traffic, logs, and metrics.

CLI:

gcloud run services list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
gcloud run services describe <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
gcloud run revisions list --service <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
# Confirm the composed DB wiring the entrypoint logged at boot:
gcloud run services logs read <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" \
  --limit 50 | grep cloud-entrypoint

See App_CloudRun for scaling, concurrency, execution environment, and traffic splitting.

B. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15

Azimutt stores all application data (schemas, diagrams, layouts, users, sources) in a managed Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15 instance. On Cloud Run the service connects over the instance private IP with SSL (DATABASE_ENABLE_SSL=true) — Ecto cannot parse the socket DSN. On first deploy an initialization Job creates the application database and role; Azimutt then runs its own Ecto migrations on boot.

Console: SQL → select the instance for connections, backups, flags, metrics.

CLI:

gcloud sql instances list --project "$PROJECT"
gcloud sql instances describe <instance-name> --project "$PROJECT"
gcloud sql connect <instance-name> --user=<db-user> --database=<db-name> --project "$PROJECT"

The instance name, database, user, and password secret are in the Outputs. See App_CloudRun for the connection model, backups, and password rotation.

C. Cloud Storage

A Cloud Storage bucket is provisioned for Azimutt. With the default FILE_STORAGE_ADAPTER = "local", Azimutt writes file uploads to the container's local ephemeral disk rather than to this bucket; the bucket exists for operators who switch Azimutt to an S3-compatible file adapter. Project data itself lives in Postgres.

Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets.

CLI:

gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT"
gcloud storage ls gs://<bucket-name>/          # bucket name is in the Outputs

See App_CloudRun for GCS Fuse and CMEK options.

D. Secret Manager

The Phoenix SECRET_KEY_BASE is generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager (used to sign and encrypt session cookies). The database password is managed separately by the foundation.

Console: Security → Secret Manager.

CLI:

gcloud secrets list --project "$PROJECT" --filter="name~secret-key-base"
gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret=<secret-name> --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for injection and rotation details.

E. Cloud Build & Artifact Registry

Azimutt's image is a thin wrapper built FROM ghcr.io/azimuttapp/azimutt; Cloud Build produces the wrapped image and it is mirrored into Artifact Registry (enable_image_mirroring = true). The base tag comes from the AZIMUTT_VERSION build arg (with latest mapped to main).

Console: Cloud Build → History; Artifact Registry → Repositories.

CLI:

gcloud builds list --project "$PROJECT" --limit 5
gcloud artifacts docker images list <region>-docker.pkg.dev/$PROJECT/<repo> --include-tags

F. Networking & ingress

The service is reachable at its run.app URL by default. An external HTTPS load balancer with a custom domain, Cloud CDN, and Cloud Armor can be layered on; ingress settings and VPC egress control connectivity. VPC egress is required so Azimutt can reach the Cloud SQL private IP.

Console: Cloud Run (service URL); Network services → Load balancing.

CLI:

gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" --format='value(status.url)'
gcloud compute addresses list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun.

G. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Container logs flow to Cloud Logging; Cloud Run and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring, with optional uptime checks and alert policies. The cloud-entrypoint lines show the resolved DATABASE_URL path, PHX_HOST, and PORT.

Console: Logging → Logs Explorer; Monitoring → Dashboards / Alerting.

CLI:

gcloud run services logs read <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" --limit 50

3. Azimutt Application Behaviour

First-deploy database setup. An initialization Job runs db-init.sh using postgres:15-alpine. It idempotently creates the application role (LOGIN CREATEDB) and database, grants ALL on the database and the public schema, and ALTERs the schema owner — Azimutt needs full DDL rights because it runs its own migrations. The job is safe to re-run.
Migrations run on start. The container command is /app/bin/migrate && /app/bin/server, so Ecto applies pending migrations on every boot before the Phoenix endpoint binds. Upgrading application_version applies schema changes automatically — no separate migration step.
Runtime DB wiring is composed by the entrypoint. DATABASE_URL is built from the injected DB_* vars, the password is URL-encoded, and on Cloud Run the connection uses the private IP (DB_IP) with DATABASE_ENABLE_SSL=true. PHX_HOST is derived from the injected service URL (scheme stripped).
SECRET_KEY_BASE is stable and effectively immutable. It is generated once and written to Secret Manager. Rotating it invalidates every active session cookie — all users are signed out. Only rotate in a maintenance window.
Health path. The startup and readiness probes target the Phoenix root / — the first endpoint that returns 200 once the server has booted and connected to Postgres. Allow ~1–2 minutes on first boot for migrations (the startup probe provides a 60-second initial delay plus a retry window).
First-run setup. Open the service URL and create the first Azimutt account through the sign-up page. Sign-up is open by default — restrict access afterwards.

Inspect the init job execution:

gcloud run jobs list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
gcloud run jobs executions list --job <job-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

4. Configuration Variables

Variables are grouped exactly as they appear on the deployment platform. Only settings specific to or notable for Azimutt are listed; every other input is inherited from App_CloudRun with its standard behaviour.